Mount & Blade: Warband

Warband owns.

Just don’t play on a private server where they’ll ban you for not sucking.

The first one was win. I’ll have to rustle up some monies for this one. Now with friend-pwning action!

Oh god, the kick is silly.

I just recently got into M&B after purchasing it more or less blindly at some ridiculous Steam sale ($5 it was, I think). What an amazing game. I almost feel guilty for paying so little for it and consider getting Warband for the full price now.

One more thing: what in the HELL is it with people calling the graphics butt ugly? The battles are absolutely beautiful. The animations, the physics, the sense of actually *being* in the middle of it all is amazing. The lighting is sharp and does basically all the tricks modern blockbuster titles do. The shaders for metal (like the sword glittering in moonlight under the ridiculously beautiful milky way night sky) are perfectly done. The vegetation, while not quite as perfect and lush as that of a SpeedTree licensed game, look good. Considering that the game is also optimized for a good hundred soldiers on screen, even the level of detail is about as high as reasonably possible.

I honestly don’t see how in the world you could call the graphics “bad”?

if your in the uk.. this game is cheaper if you buy it from game or gamestation.. than it is online £20 instead of £25!

anyway.. its pretty damn fun in multiplayer! shame that most of the servers are deathmatch :(

@humpnik I wish I was you, ignorance is bliss apparently. Physics have nothing to do with “graphics” especially since they don’t affect the visuals here, the animations are passable, the character models are extremely crude aside from a couple of OK looking armors, the textures are smudgy and blurry, the terrain is completely unnatural in the mountainous areas, the normal maps are really shoddy where applied, you can see texture seams everywhere, the HDR doesn’t do almost anything in most areas because the underlying lighting engine is way too primitive, and so on and so forth. Simply put, it shows it wasn’t done by a professional studio but instead some guy’s wife or whatever. After the success of the first and a collaboration with paradox you’d think they could put more resources in that stuff, especially since they wanted to hype the “new” graphics. It’s true there are some nice cities etc, and the game looks nice in large battles from afar when you see big numbers clash, but that’s about it. Individual elements are sub par. But hey, that’s not what we buy the game for, just don’t get your panties in a bunch when people call it as it is. The game looks like 2002, tops.

Dude you’re like the film critic that can’t enjoy the movie for what it is, and instead whines about the shoddy camera work or whatever.

“The game looks like 2002, tops.”

Man, I wish I lived in the same 2002 as you did! Mount & Blade visually pleasing, save for the odd terrain and shitty animations.

Don’t see the appeal of MP battles for this particular game. Does it have coop?

The game’s main gimmick is the combat system, but once you get bored of it and learn to exploit it (one example I found within seconds, in some areas, you can climb on top of objects as a glitch, then proceed to throw knifes and axes at the enemy and they can’t reach you, or drop down then deliver a 100+ speed bonus kill, etc.) so that you always win, the game becomes boring quickly.

@someone, play on normal difficulty settings and I’m sure you won’t be able to always win. People often crit M&B yet set damage settings to 1/4th for the player and 1/2 for their army, poor AI, etc. What you describe will still make it impossible to win, it’s not like enemies don’t have ranged weapons as well to hit you with, and even with a shield a few thrown axes will break it eventually. The exploit might work against bandit parties but not proper armies which will overwhelm you if you don’t have an army of suitable size of your own and play properly.

@jotaf, I am? I merely said the graphics suck, I didn’t say anything about the game being unworthy BECAUSE the graphics suck, if you actually read my comments here rather than go in fanboy mode thinking oh no, criticism, he must be wrong!

Can someone share some details about multiplayer? I am curious if it’s only in battles. I badly want multiplayer during the entire campaign, with other lords and kingdoms being controlled by players, all moving around on the overworld map together, and then getting into the battlefield action when you fight.

Everything I’ve heard makes it sound as though the only aspect of multiplayer are the battles, and nothing else. Is that true?

The game really is brilliant. I love the multiplayer, even if there’s no overarching theme to it like the campaign/singleplayer, which is also amazing. Highly recommended!

@Al3xand3r: Argh, man, you’re killing me!

I probably wouldn’t get this upset if I hadn’t read professional reviews comparing this game to AAA DX11 tesselated games with megatextures… and subtracting points for not having the same amount of shaders. For example, Metro 2033 has some of the most “advanced” graphics out there. But then they use to to make characters look like this. Awkward.

I give you the sometimes odd-looking hills. I even give you the 37.72% more low-res textures than other games released at the time. But, for example, I simply cannot agree on the lighting being bad. It just is not. Look at this screen. It looks bloody fantastic. And this is not an unusual sight. This is the impression I get whenever entering a town or a battle field. That’s from the first M&B, not Warband.

Also, with most new graphic effects these day, most of which you hardly see unless running right in front of them, animations *are* among the most important tool for making scenes look aesthetically pleasing. And M&B is just masterful at it. It just feels right. The way riders just slowly glide off their horses when defeated, the way swords and shields just move absolutely fluently even within the most unusual maneuvers, the victory poses after a successful battle… it’s just beautifully done.

I just think that, indie game or not, the graphical presentation of this game deserves a lot more respect than it gets. Who cares about foliage looking pointy from certain angles? You can even find ugly polygons in Crysis, if you really want to and in 10 years we call the graphics “bad”. What’s important is, that, with the gameplay focus and hardware requirements chosen, the atmosphere is right. And in that regard, M&B works beautifully.

@humpnik: LOL at that Metro 2033 screenshot.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,87617.0.html

@Al3xand3r: Alright, I give up. I mean, I see what you mean, compared to *multi-million dollar productions.* Never denied you could do it better, especially the foliage and some of the terrain. But when I hear you complaining about “spending time in a menu” I just have to ask: How did you end up on TIGSource?

And why do you pretend only multimillion dollar projects can do better when I showed a fan mod that does trees far, far better, all from one person?

Guys, he just said the game looks crap and like it’s from 2002 and he’s right. People challenged that and he proved it with a specific example. I see no problem with that. He even said he would prefer if they did’t invest in graphics at all for Warband, since to him it looks just as bad as before, saying money would have been better spent in the gameplay. And you lot respond to that as if he’s some kind of graphics whore. It just seems like you challenge his opinion for no reason whatsoever and twist what he said to make ground for a counter argument. There’s no counter argument, it’s his opinion. I agree with him but that’s besides the point.

Rather than do x instead of y, they should have released it when it was ready. Or simply renamed it to ‘beta’ and released it under the model they used for mount & blade.

I think it is pretty safe to say that there will be ongoing updates, so y’ll can relax. And for the graphics, the support for modding will remedy that eventually. I hope to give modding a go myself this time round!

I didn’t “only focus” on that, other people “only focused” on that part of my post and I responded accordingly. And no, it doesn’t look real, get your eyes checked.

On a slightly odder note, can I still buy the original as a non-steam standalone? There doesn’t seem to be a link anymore, and I’d rather not play warbands yet until all the bugs are fixed.

AGGGHHHh I hate ham sandwiiiiiches! Ham sandwiches *are* crap!

I won’t weigh in on who I think is right about whether the graphics are dated or not, because frankly I don’t know and don’t think it is relevant, especially for such hairsplitting as the verisimilitude of the tree rendering, etc.

But I will say that I can’t really grok how it pertains to enjoying the game in toto at all! I think you run the risk of spoiling it for yourself if you are on the lookout for smudgy textures with those eagle eyes of yours.

Maybe it’s a little amusing to create these hierarchies of objective, quantitative quality (HDR, texture resolution, blah blah), but really? 2002 vintage or not, this seems like a one of those pseudo-scientific discussions on par with people who have games of oneupmanship around SLR cameras and similar hardware.

If there is some overhead, sure, why not, throw in some spiffy graphics if you please. But as mentioned, there are other things taking center stage in this game, such as issues of scaling, large-scale battles, AI (?), plus the fact that this obviously isn’t being churned out by some large-scale studio that wants to sell you 3D goggles so you can watch in scintillating detail as the mip-mapped pimples burst on the player character’s face. (Is mip-mapping even used anymore? I date myself…)

Besides, I’m pretty confident that it does look like a medieval world. Armor, check. Castles, check. Trees, check. From what I see of the screenshots, which look just hunky-dory, all that is necessary to suspend my disbelief is there and in place.

I mean, symbolic systems, guys?? For a genre of game that just needs some simple referential cues to jog your memory that you are in a medieval warzone, I think this passes muster. Look at that freaky uncanny valley shit someone posted up above. Do you really want to be looking at some borderline “TRUE REALITY” player models and valley textures with downright pluckable daffodils? For my money, I’d rather be outside and looking at real daffodils and real, non-freaky people.

I struggle to understand this notion that there is a vertical progression with this kind of thing, and the only way to go is UP with photorealism and other gimmickry. This is why every gorgeous big-budget title is completely stultifying to play, because there is no concern given for gameplay. I’m sure that all of us, as readers of TIGSource, are keen on innovation in games, but it seems to be too much to ask, stretching reasonableness too thin, to want both axes at a time – AAA graphics and AAA originality.

Besides, there’s something to be said for games looking like games, in all of their cardboard-cutout primitive nature. There’s a huge expanse, graphically, between Dwarf Fortress and whatever the latest Far Cry FPS thing is today. It’s not as though it has to be all or nothing.

Consider this game. Consider that today’s middle-ground, “dated” graphics, like those presented here, are wayyy sufficient in both representing the idea of mounted combat AND looking pretty presentable. You wouldn’t mind your mother-in-law looking at it; she wouldn’t find it inscrutable.

So a plateau (graphically) doesn’t have to be a leveling off. A plateau is a huge, huge area where lots of people can flesh out different ideas in a mutually comprehensible and sufficiently high-quality format. Ascending upwards, towards more fine-grained polish — this isn’t bad, to be sure. But is it good, or worthwhile? Climbing to the pointiest peak is a treacherous trip with little reward.

I know, I know, this kind of game, with its large-scale sense of scope, just wouldn’t be the same with some 16-bit SNES thing going on. This is true. But my god, where to go from here? Remember those large-scale RTS games with 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds or whatever, circa ~2000? Even THAT shit was impressive and gave a sense of scope.

I’m sure there are riveting experiences to be had pursuing a higher level of realism and polish, but too often this becomes an impossible game of chicken between hardware manufacturers and the player, and too often you miss out on more subtle immersion by focusing on what detracts from the realism than what adds to it. I think the onus is on the player to suspend their disbelief, which is why good IF games still succeed at being totally enthralling. Putting that responsibility on the developer to add more elements of realism for you… well, this seems like a recipe for a treadmill of insatiability, because that bar is constantly being raised and “realism” redefined.

Uhhhhhh, regardless, what I was going to say before I read the comments is that this looks really gripping and seems like you would get right into the feeling of large-scale combat!

Then again, you should take all of this with a grain of salt, because I’ve always been behind the hardware curve and never had the horsepower to play bleeding-edge games until 5-10 years after they were relevant. I saw the trailer above and thought it was some downright futuristic 3D wizardry. I’m still graduating from my surprise at Half Life 1’s graphics :(

Are the animations better in this version? That was my biggest problem with the first one, and what drove me to stop playing it. The character models weren’t great but I felt like I was playing Morrowind or something with the animation, and given how much time I had to look at weapons swinging around, I decided it wasn’t worth playing anymore.

That said, if someone released a decent Japanese mod I’d probably be all over it, crappy graphics or not. Medieval Europe/generic fantasy has been done to death. I’d much rather recreate some ancient China or Japan.

So anyway. Let’s talk about shit that actually matters.

“the game becomes boring quickly”

So play MP? I don’t understand people who buy things that are primarily targeted at an MP community (as Warband is) and then complain about the dumb AI. The AI is not the _point_, dude. A (good) human player is always going to smarter and cleverer than any AI could ever be. If you want a real challenge, hop online and get your ass kicked.

Alternatively, stop playing the game with those stupid fucking exploits. That’s obviously not how it was meant to be played, complaining that it’s too easy playing like that is like complaining that it’s too easy playing with cheats.

Also. The combat is not a “gimmick.” The combat is the game. People need to stop overusing that word, it’s getting meaningless.